Swelligance

I finished the Swelligant Scarf this morning. Not bragging or anything -- okay, I'm bragging -- eight days from cast on to bindoff. I should have made this one of those knitting olympics challenges. Actually, I did a lot of the knitting for this while watching the Democratic convention on the tube during the evenings this week. Perhaps it was the excitement of the times we live in that gave me super knitting powers.

I can highly recommend this pattern (Ravelers can find out more here) for a quick knit that doesn't require a whole lot of attention. Once you get a few stitch and row markers in place, you just whiz along. I did make a mistake toward the end where I cabled on the first strip and not on the matching third. Pretty incredible that I only did this once, come to think of it. I just ripped back and all was good.

I used all but about 6 inches of the four balls of yarn I had. The pattern says to knit to a certain row, and then knit 12 more rows of a certain type and then bind off. It requires a fairly good eye for how much yarn you have left. I got lucky. After doing a sewn bind-off, I had about 8 inches of yarn left (see photo). Whew.

I haven't blocked this, and I think I'm not going to. The finished scarf is suppoosed to be 60 inches long. This one is closer to 54", but I tried it on and it seems fine to me. Blocking would allow me to put in that stretch, but I just don't think it's necessary. What do you think -- is it necessary to block this?

Now I have to read up on the process for sending this to the OFA Red Scarf Project folks so it can be forwarded to its recipient. I've never done any altruistic knitting like this before. It feels pretty good.